The House of Mystery by Will Irwin

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Title: The House of Mystery
An Episode in the Career of Rosalie Le Grange, Clairvoyant An Episode
in the Career of Rosalie Le Grange, Clairvoyant

Author: William Henry Irwin

Release Date: June 22, 2004 [EBook #12678]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY

AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF

ROSALIE LE GRANGE, CLAIRVOYANT

By

WILL IRWIN

Illustrated by Frederick C. Yohn

New York

The Century Co.

1910

CONTENTS

I. The Unknown Girl
II. Mr. Norcross Wastes Time
III. The Light
IV. His First Call
V. The Light Wavers
VI. Enter Rosalie Le Grange
VII. Rosalie's First Report
VIII. The Fish Nibbles

IX. Rosalie's Second Report
X. The Streams Converge
XI. Through the Wall-Paper
XII. Annette Lies
XIII. Annette Tells the Truth
XIV. Mainly from the Papers

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Rosalie le Grange

Annette

"It wasn't the money; it was the game—"

He had taken an impression of mental power as startling as a sudden blow in the face

"Then it's as good as done"

Norcross's breath came a little faster

"I was looking straight down on the back parlors"

"Stay where you are," he commanded

THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY

I

THE UNKNOWN GIRL

In a Boston and Albany parlor-car, east bound through the Berkshires, sat a young man respectfully, but intently studying a young

woman. Now and then, from the newspapers heaped in mannish confusion about his chair, he selected another sheet. Always, he
took advantage of this opportunity to face the chair across the aisle and to sweep a glance over a piquant little profile, intent on a
sober-looking book. Again, he would gaze out of the window; and he gazed oftenest when a freight train hid the beauties of outside
nature. The dun sides of freight cars make out of a window a passable mirror. Twice, in those dim and confused glimpses, he caught
just a flicker of her eye across her book, as though, she, on her part, were studying him.

It was her back hair which had first entangled Dr. Blake's thoughts; it was the graceful nape of her neck which had served to hold

them fast. When the hair and the neck below dawned on him, he identified her as that blonde girl whom he had noted at the train gate,
waving farewell to some receding friend—and noted with approval. As a traveler on many seas and much land, he knew the lonely
longing to address the woman in the next seat. He knew also, as all seasoned travelers in America know, that such desire is
sometimes gratified, and without any surrender of decency, in the frank and easy West—but never east of Chicago. This girl,
however, exercised somehow, a special pull upon his attention and his imagination. And he found himself playing a game by which he
had mitigated many a journey of old. He divided his personality into two parts—man and physician—and tried, by each separate
power, to find as much as he could from surface indications about this travel-mate of his.

Mr. Walter Huntington Blake perceived, besides the hair like dripping honey, deep blue eyes—the blue not of a turquoise but of a

sapphire—and an oval face a little too narrow in the jaw, so that the chin pointed a delicate Gothic arch. He noted a good forehead,
which inclined him to the belief that she "did" something—some subtle addition which he could not formulate confirmed that
observation. He saw that her hands were long and tipped with nails no larger than a grain of maize, that when they rested for a
moment on her face, in the shifting attitudes of her reading, they fell as gently as flower-stalks swaying together in a breeze. He saw
that her shoulders had a slight slope, which combined with hands and eyes to express a being all feminine—the kind made for a
lodestone to a man who has known the hard spots of the world, like Mr. Walter Huntington Blake.

"A pippin!" pronounced Mr. Blake, the man.

Dr. Blake, the physician, on the other hand, caught a certain languor in her movements, a physical tenuity which, in a patient, he

would have considered diagnostic. So transparent was her skin that when her profile dipped forward across a bar of sunshine the
light shone through the bridge of her nose—a little observation charming to Blake, the man, but a guide to Blake, the physician. She
had the look, Dr. Blake told himself, which old-fashioned country nurses of the herb-doctor school refer to as "called." He knew that,
in about one case out of three, that look does in fact amount to a real "call"—the outward expression of an obscure disease.

"Her heart?" queried Blake, the physician. The transparent, porcelain

quality of her skin would indicate that. But he found, as he watched, no
nervous twitching, no look as of an incipient sack under her eyes; nor
did the transparent quality seem waxy. There was, too, a certain
pinkness in the porcelain which showed that her blood ran red and
pure.

Then Mr. Blake and Dr. Blake re-fused into one psychology and

decided that her appearance of delicacy was subtly psychological. It
haunted him with an irritating effect of familiarity—as of a symptom
which he ought to recognize. In all ways was it intertwined with the
expression of her mouth. She had never smiled enough; therein lay all
the trouble. She presented a very pretty problem to his imagination.
Here she was, still so very young that little was written on her face, yet
the little, something unusual, baffling. The mouth, too tightly set, too
drooping—that expressed it all. To educate such a one in the ways of
innocent frivolity!

When the porter's "last call for luncheon" brought that flutter of

satisfaction by which a bored parlor-car welcomes even such a trivial
diversion as food, Dr. Blake waited a fair interval for her toilet
preparations, and followed toward the dining-car. He smiled a little at
himself as he realized that he was craftily scheming to find a seat, if not
opposite her, at least within seeing distance. On a long and lonely day-journey, he told himself, travelers are like invalids—the
smallest incident rolls up into a mountain of adventure. Here he was, playing for sight of an interesting girl, as another traveler timed
the train-speed by the mile-posts, or counted the telegraph poles along the way.

So he came out suddenly into the Pullman car ahead—and almost stumbled over the nucleus of his meditations. She was half-

kneeling beside a seat, clasping in her arms the figure of a little, old woman. He hesitated, stock still. The blonde girl shifted her
position as though to take better hold of her burden, and glanced backward with a look of appeal. The doctor came forward on that;
and his sight caught the face of the old woman. Her eyes were closed, her head had dropped to one side and lay supine upon the
girl's shoulder. It appeared to be a plain case of faint.

"I am a physician," he said simply, "Get the porter, will you?" Without an instant's question or hesitation, the girl permitted him to

relieve her, and turned to the front of the car. Other women and one fussy, noisy man were coming up now. Dr. Blake waved them
aside. "We need air most of all—open that window, will you?" The girl was back with the porter. "Is the compartment occupied?
Then open it. We must put her on her back." The porter fumbled for his keys. Dr. Blake gathered up the little old woman in his arms,
and spoke over his shoulder to the blonde girl:

"You will come with us?" She nodded. Somehow, he felt that he would have picked her from the whole car to assist in this

emergency. She was like one of those born trained nurses who ask no questions, need no special directions, and are as reliable as
one's instruments.

The old woman was stirring by the time he laid her out on the sofa of the compartment. He wet a towel in the pitcher at the

washstand, wrung it out, pressed it on her forehead. It needed no more than that to bring her round.

"Only a faint," said Dr. Blake; "the day's hot and she's not accustomed to train travel, I suppose. Is she—does she belong to your

party?"

The girl spoke for the first time in his hearing. Even before he seized the meaning of her speech, he noted with a thrill the manner of

it. Such a physique as this should go with the high, silvery tone of a flute; so one always imagines it. This girl spoke in the voice of a

violin—soft, deep, deliciously resonant. In his mind flashed a picture for which he was a long time accounting—last winter's ballet of
the New York Hippodrome. Afterward, he found the key to that train of thought. It, had been a ballet of light, shimmering colors,
until suddenly a troop of birds in royal purple had slashed their way down the center of the stage. They brought the same glorified
thrill of contrast as this soft but strong contralto voice proceeding from that delicate blondness.

"Oh, no!" she said, "I never saw her before. She was swaying as I came down the aisle, and I caught her. She's—she's awake."

The old woman had stirred again.

"Get my bag from seat 12, parlor-car," said Dr. Blake to the porter. "Tell them outside that it is a simple fainting-spell and we shall

need no assistance." Now his charity patient had recovered voice; she was moaning and whimpering. The girl, obeying again Dr.
Blake's unspoken thought, took a quick step toward the door. He understood without further word from her.

"All right," he said; "she may want to discuss symptoms. You're on the way to the dining-car aren't you? I'll be along in five

minutes, and I'll let you know how she is. Tell them outside that it is nothing serious and have the porter stand by—please." That last
word of politeness came out on an afterthought—he had been addressing her in the capacity of a trained nurse. He recognized this
with confusion, and he apologized by a smile which illuminated his rather heavy, dark face. She answered with the ghost of a smile—it
moved her eyes rather than her mouth—and the door closed.

After five minutes of perfunctory examination and courteous attention to symptoms, he tore himself away from his patient upon the

pretext that she needed quiet. He wasted three more golden minutes in assuring his fellow passengers that it was nothing. He escaped
to the dining car, to find that the delay had favored him. Her honey-colored back hair gleamed from one of the narrow tables to left of
the aisle. The unconsidered man opposite her had just laid a bill on the waiter's check, and dipped his hands in the fingerbowl. Dr.
Blake invented a short colloquy with the conductor and slipped up just as the waiter returned with the change. He bent over the girl.

"I have to report," said he, "that the patient is doing nicely; doctor and nurse are both discharged!"

She returned a grave smile and answered conventionally, "I am very glad."

At that precise moment, the man across the table, as though recognizing friendship or familiarity between these two, pocketed his

change and rose. Feeling that he was doing the thing awkwardly, that he would give a year for a light word to cover up his boldness,
Dr. Blake took the seat. He looked slowly up as he settled himself, and he could feel the heat of a blush on his temples. He perceived
—and for a moment it did not reassure him—that she on her part neither blushed nor bristled. Her skin kept its transparent whiteness,
and her eyes looked into his with intent gravity. Indeed, he felt through her whole attitude the perfect frankness of good breeding—a
frankness which discouraged familiarity while accepting with human simplicity an accidental contact of the highway. She was the
better gentleman of the two. His renewed confusion set him to talking fast.

"If it weren't that you failed to come in with any superfluous advice, I should say that you had been a nurse—you seem to have the

instinct. You take hold, somehow, and make no fuss."

"Why should I?" she asked, "with a doctor at hand? I was thinking all the time how you lean on a doctor. I should never have

known what to do. How is she? What was the matter?"

"She's resting. It isn't every elderly lady who can get a compartment from the Pullman Company for the price of a seat. She was

put on at Albany by one set of grandchildren and she's to be taken off at Boston by another set. And she's old and her heart's a little
sluggish—self-sacrifice goes downward not upward, through the generations, I observe—though I'm a young physician at that!"

Her next words, simply spoken as they were, threw him again into confusion.

"I don't know your name, I think—mine is Annette Markham."

Dr. Blake drew out a card.

"Dr. W.H. Blake, sometime contract surgeon to the Philippine Army of Occupation," he supplemented, "now looking for a practice

in these United States!"

"The Philippines—oh, you've been in the East? When we were in the Orient, I used to hear of them ever so dimly—I didn't think

we'd all be talking of them so soon—"

"Oh, you've been in the Orient—do you know the China Coast—and Nikko and—"

"No, only India."

"I've never been there—and I've heard it's the kernel of the East," he said with his lips. But his mind was puzzling something out

and finding a solution. The accent of that deep, resonant voice was neither Eastern nor Western, Yankee nor Southern—nor yet quite
British. It was rather cosmopolitan—he had dimly placed her as a Californienne. Perhaps this fragment explained it. She must be a
daughter of the English official class, reared in America. The theory would explain her complexion and her simple, natural balance
between frankness and reserve. He formed that conclusion, but, "How do you like America after India?" was all he said.

"How do you like it after the Philippines?" she responded.

"That is a Yankee trick—answering one question with another," he said, still following his line of conjecture; "it was invented by the

original Yankee philosopher, a person named Socrates. I like it after everything—I'm an American. I'm one of those rare birds in the
Eastern United States, a native of New York City."

"Well, then,"—her manner had, for the first time, the brightness which goes with youth, plus the romantic adventure—"I like it not

only after anything but before anything—I'm an American, too."

A sense of irritation rose in him. He had let conjecture grow to conclusion in the most reckless fashion. And why should he care so

much that he had risked offending a mere passing acquaintance of the road?

"Somehow, I had taken it for granted—your reference to India I suppose—that you were English."

"Oh, no! Though an English governess made me fond of the English. I'm another of the rare birds. I was hardly out of New York in

my life until five years ago, when my aunt took me for a stay of two years in the Orient—in India at least. I've been very happy to be
back."

The current of talk drifted then from the coast of confidences to the open sea of general conversation. He pulled himself up once or

twice by the reflection that he was talking too much about himself. Once—and he remembered it with blushes afterward—he went so
far as to say, "I didn't really need to be a doctor, any more than I needed to go to the Philippines—the family income takes care of
that. But a man should do something." Nevertheless, she seemed disposed to encourage him in this course, seemed most to
encourage him when he told his stories about the Philippine Army of Occupation.

"Oh, tell me another!" she would cry. And once she said, "If there were a piano here, I venture you'd sing Mandelay." "That would

I," he answered with a half sigh. And at last, when he was running down, she said, "Oh, please don't stop! It makes me crazy for the
Orient!" "And me!" he confessed. Before luncheon was over, he had dragged out the two or three best stories in his wanderer's pack,
and especially that one, which he saved for late firesides and the high moments of anecdotal exchange, about the charge at Caloocon.
She drank down these tales of hike and jungle and firing-line like a seminary girl listening to her first grownup caller. For his part,
youth and the need of male youth to spread its bright feathers before the female of its species, drove him on to more tales. He
contrived his luncheon so that they finished and paid simultaneously—and in the middle of his story about Sergeant Jones, the
dynamite and the pack mule. So, when they returned to the parlor-car, nothing was more simple, natural and necessary than that he
should drop into the vacant chair beside her, and continue where he left off. He felt, when he had finished, the polite necessity of
leading the talk back to her; besides, he had not finished his Study of the Unknown Girl. He returned, then, to the last thread which
she had left hanging.

"So you too are glad to be at home!" he said. "I'm so glad that I don't want to lose sight either of a skyscraper or of apple trees for

years and years. I can't remember when I've ever wanted to stay in one place before."

She laughed—the first full laugh he had heard from her. It was low and deep and bubbling, like water flowing from a long-necked

bottle.

"Just a moment ago, we were confessing that we were crazy for the Orient."

"I'm glad to be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign

of incipient old age."

She looked at him directly, and for a moment her fearless glance played over him, as in alarm.

"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid of that," she said. "I don't know your age, of course, but if it will reassure you any, I'd put it at twenty-

eight. And that, according to Peter Ibbertson, is quite the nicest age." Her face, with its unyouthful capacity for sudden seriousness,
grew grave. Her deep blue eyes gazed past him out of the window.

"I'm only twenty-four, but I know what it is to think that middle age is near—to dread it—especially when I half suspect I haven't

spent the interest on my youth." She stopped.

Dr. Blake held his very breath. His instincts warned him that she faltered at one of those instincts when confidence lies close to the

lips. But she did not give it. Instead, she caught herself up with a perfunctory, "I suppose everyone feels that way at times."

Although he wanted that confidence, he was clever enough not to reach for it at this point. Instead, he took a wide detour, and

returned slowly, backing and filling to the point. But every time that he approached a closer intimacy, she veered away with an
adroitness which was consummate art or consummate innocence. His first impression grew—that she "did" something. She had
mentioned "Peter Ibbertson." He spoke, then, of books. She had read much, especially fiction; but she treated books as one who
does not write. He talked art. Though she spoke with originality and understanding in response to his second-hand studio chatter, he
could see that she neither painted nor associated much with those who did. Besides, her hands had none of the craftswoman's
muscle. Of music—beyond ragtime—she knew as little as he. He invaded business—her ignorance was abysmal. The stage—she
could count on her fingers the late plays which she had seen.

When the trail had grown almost cold, there happened a little incident which put him on the scent again. He had thought suddenly

of his patient in the compartment and made a visit, only to find her asleep. Upon his return he said:

"You behaved like a soldier and a nurse toward her—a girl with such a distinct flair for the game must have had longings to take

up nursing—or perhaps you never read 'Sister Dora'?"

"I did read 'Sister Dora,'" she answered, "and I was crazy about it."

"Most girls are—hence the high death rate in hospitals," he interrupted.

"But I gave that up—and a lot of other desires which all girls have—for something else. I had to." Her sapphirine eyes searched the

Berkshire hills again, "Something bigger and nobler—something which meant the entire sacrifice of self."

And here the brakeman called "Next station is Berkeley Center." Dr. Blake came to the sudden realization that they had reached

his destination. She started, too.

"Why, I get off here!" she exclaimed.

"And so do I!" He almost laughed it out.

"That's a coincidence."

Dr. Blake refrained from calling her attention to the general flutter of the parlor-car and the industry of two porters. This being the

high-tide time of the summer migration, and Berkeley Center being the popular resort on that line, nearly everyone was getting off.
However as he delivered himself over to the porter, he nodded:

"The climax of a series!"

As they waited, bags in hand, "I am on my way to substitute for a month at the Hill Sanatorium," he said. "The assistant physician is

going on a vacation—I suppose the ambulance will be waiting."

"And I am going to the Mountain House—it's a little place and more the house of friends than an inn. If your work permits—"

He interrupted with a boyish laugh.

"Oh, it will!" But he said good-bye at the vestibule with a vague idea that she might have trouble explaining him to any very

particular friends. He saw her mount an old-fashioned carry-all, saw her turn to wave a farewell. The carry-all disappeared. He
started toward the Hill ambulance, but he was still thinking, "Now what is the thing which a girl like that would consider more self-
sacrificing than nursing?"

II

MR. NORCROSS WASTES TIME

Robert H. Norcross looked up from a sheet of figures, and turned his vision upon the serrated spire of old Trinity Church, far

below. Since his eyes began to fail, he had cultivated the salutary habit of resting them every half-hour or so. The action was merely
mechanical; his mind still lingered on the gross earnings of the reorganized L.D. and M. railroad. It was a sultry afternoon in early fall.
The roar of lower New York came up to him muffled by the haze. The traffic seemed to move more slowly than usual, as though that
haze clogged its wheels and congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond, partook of the season's languor. They
crept over the oily waves at a sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily toward the water.

The eyes of Robert H. Norcross swept this vista for the allotted two minutes of rest. Presently—and with the very slightest change

of expression—they fixed themselves on a point so far below that he needs must lean forward and rest his arms on the window sill in
order to look. He wasted thus a minute; and such a wasting, in the case of Robert H. Norcross, was a considerable matter. The
Sunday newspapers—when in doubt—always played the income of Robert H. Norcross by periods of months, weeks, days, hours
and minutes. Every minute of his time, their reliable statisticians computed, was worth a trifle less than forty-seven dollars. Regardless
of the waste of time, he continued to gaze until the watch on his desk had ticked off five minutes, or two hundred and thirty-five
dollars.

The thing which had caught and held his attention was a point in the churchyard of old Trinity near to the south door.

The Street had been remarking, for a year, that Norcross was growing old. The change did not show in his operations. His grip on

the market was as firm as ever, his judgment as sure, his imagination as daring, his habit of keeping his own counsel as settled. Within
that year, he had consummated the series of operations by which the L.D. and M., final independent road needed by his system, had
"come in"; within that year, he had closed the last finger of his grip on a whole principality of our domain. Every laborer in that area
would thenceforth do a part of his day's delving, every merchant a part of his day's bargaining, for Robert H. Norcross. Thenceforth
—until some other robber baron should wrest it from his hands—Norcross would make laws and unmake legislatures, dictate
judgments and overrule appointments—give the high justice while courts and assemblies trifled with the middle and the low. Certainly
the history of that year in American finance indicated no flagging in the powers of Robert H. Norcross.

The change which the Street had marked lay in his face—it had taken on the subtle imprint of a first frosty day. He had never

looked the power that he was. Short and slight of build, his head was rather small even for his size, and his features were insignificant
—all except the mouth, whose wide firmness he covered by a drooping mustache, and the eyes, which betrayed always an inner fire.
The trained observer of faces noticed this, however; every curve of his facial muscles, every plane of the inner bone-structure, was
set by nature definitely and properly in its place to make a powerful and perfectly coördinated whole. In this facial manifestation of
mental powers, he was like one of those little athletes who, carrying nothing superfluous, show the power, force and endurance which
is in them by no masses of overlying muscles, but only by a masterful symmetry.

Now, in a year, the change had come over his face—the jump as abrupt as that by which a young girl grows up—the transition

from middle age to old age. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair and mustache had bleached and silvered. It was more that
the cheeks were falling from middle-aged masses to old-age creases, more that the skin was drawing up, most that the inner energy
which had vitalized his walk and gestures was his no longer.

In the mind, too—though no one perceived that, he least of all—had come a change. Here and there, a cell had disintegrated and

collapsed. They were not the cells which vitalized his business sense. They lay deeper down; it was as though their very disuse for
thirty years had weakened them. In such a cell his consciousness dwelt while he gazed on Trinity Churchyard, and especially upon
that modest shaft of granite, three graves from the south entrance. And the watch on his desk clicked off the valuable seconds, and
the electric clock on the wall jumped to mark the passing minutes. "Click-click" from the desk—seventy-eight cents—"Click-click"—
one dollar and fifty-seven cents—"Clack" from the wall—forty-seven dollars.

Presently, when watch and clock had chronicled four hundred and seventy dollars of wasted time, he leaned back, looked for a

moment on the brazen September heavens above, and sighed. He might then have turned back to his desk and the table of gross
earnings, but for his secretary.

"Mr. Bulger outside, sir," said the secretary.

"All right!" responded Mr. Norcross. In him, those two words spoke enthusiasm; usually, a gesture or a nod was enough to bar or

admit a visitor to the royal presence. Hard behind the secretary, entered with a bound and a breeze, Mr. Arthur Bulger. He was a tall
man about forty-five if you studied him carefully, no more than thirty-five if you studied him casually. Not only his strong shoulders, his
firm set on his feet, his well-conditioned skin, showed the ex-athlete who has kept up his athletics into middle age, but also that very
breeze and bound of a man whose blood runs quick and orderly through its channels. His face, a little pudgy, took illumination from a
pair of lively eyes. He was the jester in the court of King Norcross; one of the half-dozen men whom the bachelor lord of railroads
admitted to intimacy. A measured intimacy it was; and it never trenched on business. Bulger, like all the rest, owed half of his position
to the fact that he never asked by so much as a hint for tips, never seemed curious about the operations of Norcross. There was the
time on Wall Street when Norcross, by a lift of his finger, a deflection of his eye, might have put his cousin and only known relative on
the right side of the market. He withheld the sign, and his cousin lost. The survivors in Norcross's circle of friends understood this
perfectly; it was why they survived. If they got any financial advantage from the friendship, it was through the advertising it gave. For
example, Bulger, a broker of only moderate importance, owed something to the general understanding that he was "thick with the Old
Man."

Norcross looked up; his mustache lifted a little, and his eyes lit.

"Drink?" he said. His allowance was two drinks a day; one just before he left the office, the other before dinner.

"Much obliged," responded Bulger, "but you know where I was last night. If I took a drink now, I would emit a pale, blue flame."

Norcross laughed a purring laugh, and touched a bell. The secretary stood in the door; Norcross indicated, by an out-turned hand,

the top of his desk. The secretary had hardly disappeared before the office-boy entered with a tray and glasses. Simultaneously a
clerk, entering from another door as though by accident, swept up the balance sheets of the L.D. and M. and bore them away.
Bulger's glance followed the papers hungrily for a second; then turned back on Norcross, carefully mixing a Scotch highball.

As Norcross finished with the siphon, his eyes wandered downward again.

"Ever been about much down there?" he asked suddenly. Bulger crossed the room and looked down over his shoulder.

"Where?" he asked, "The Street or—"

"Trinity Churchyard."

"Once I sang my little love lays there in the noon hour," answered Bulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that ever

caressed a typewriter—" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct
of the courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the unused half of his mind for appropriate sentiments.

"Bully old graveyard," he brought out; "lot's of good people buried there."

"Know any of the graves?"

"Only Alexander Hamilton's. Everyone knows that."

"That one—see—that marble shaft—not one of the old ones."

"If you're curious to know," answered Bulger easily, "I'll find out on my way down to-morrow. I suppose if you were to go and

look, and the reporters were to see you meditating among the tombs, we'd have a scare head to-morrow and a drop of ten points in
the market." Bulger's shift to a slight levity was premeditated; he was taking guard against overplaying his part.

"No, never mind," said Norcross, "it just recalls something." He paused the fraction of a second, and his eye grew dull. "Wonder if

they're—anywhere—those people down under the tombstones?"

"I suppose we all believe in immortality."

"Seeing and hearing is believing. I believe what I see. Born that way." Norcross was speaking with a slight, agitated jerk in his

voice. He rose now, and paced the floor, throwing out his feet in quick thrusts. "I'm getting along, Bulger, and I'd like to know." More
pacing. Coming to the end of his route, he peered shrewdly into the face of the younger man. "Have you read the Psychical Society's
report on Mrs. Fife?"

Bulger's mind said, "Good God no!" His lips said, "Only some newspaper stuff about them. Seemed rather remarkable if true.

Something in that stuff, I suppose."

"I've read them," resumed Norcross. "Got the full set. We ought to inform ourselves on such things, Bulger. Especially when we get

older. That gravestone now. There's one like it—that I know about." Norcross, with another jerky motion, which seemed to propel
him against his will, crossed to his desk and touched a bell, bringing his secretary instantly.

"Left hand side of the vault, box marked 'Private 3,'" he said. Then he resumed:

"If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those we loved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to

assure us it is all right—that we'll live again. That's what I want—proof—I can't take it on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he
whispered. "What's thirty years?"

The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass top of the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew

out his keys, opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers. Norcross looked within for a moment, as though
turning the scent into memories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, and then extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an
exquisite miniature—a young woman, blonde, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless, too—a face upon which life had
left nothing, so that even the great painter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated it only with technical skill.

"Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcross said quietly; "I prefer to keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight

clerk. She taught school up there. We were—well, the ring's in the box, too. They took it off her finger when they buried her. That's
why—" to put the brake on his rapidly running sentiment, he ventured one of his rare pleasantries at this point—"that's why I'm still a
stock newspaper feature as one of the great matches for ambitious society girls."

Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of the case were two sets of initials in old English letters—"R.H.N."

and "H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields, tried idly to match "H.W." with names. Suddenly he felt the
necessity of expressing sympathy.

"Poor—" he began, but Norcross, by a swift outward gesture of the hand, stopped and saved him.

"Well, I got in after that," Norcross went on, "and I drove 'em! It wasn't the money; it was the game. She'd have had the spending

of that. And it isn't just to see her—it's to know if she is still waiting—and if we'll make up for thirty years—out there."

As Bulger handed back the locket, the secretary knocked again. Norcross started; something seemed to snap into place; he was

again the silent, guarded baron of the railroads. He dropped the locket into the box, closed it. "The automobile," said his secretary.
Norcross nodded, and indicated the box. The secretary bore it away.

"Come up to dinner Tuesday," said Norcross in his normal tone. But his voice quavered a little for a moment as he added:

"You're good at forgetting?"

"Possessor of the best forgettery you ever saw," responded Bulger. Forthwith, they turned to speech of the railroad rate bill.

When, after a mufti dinner at the club, Bulger reached his bachelor apartments, he found a telegram. The envelope bore his office

address; by that sign he knew, even before he unfolded the yellow paper, that it was the important telegram from his partner, the
crucial telegram, for which he had been waiting these two days. It must have come to the office after he left. He got out the code
book from his desk, laid it open beside the sheet, and began to decipher, his face whitening as he went on:

BUTTE, MONT.

Reports of expert phony. Think Oppendike salted it on him. They will finish this vein in a month. Then the show will
bust. Federated Copper Company will not bite and too late now to unload on public. Something must be done. Can't
you use your drag with Norcross somehow?

WATSON.

Bulger, twisting the piece of yellow paper, stared out into the street. His "drag with Norcross!" What had that ever brought, what

could it ever bring, except advertising and vague standing? Yet Norcross by a word, a wink, could give him information which, rightly
used, would cancel all the losses of this unfortunate plunge in the Mongolia Mine. But Norcross would never give that word, that
wink; and to fish for it were folly. Norcross never broke the rules of the lone game which he played.

As Bulger stood there, immovable except for the nervous hands which still twisted and worried the telegram, he saw a sign on the

building opposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible; the second, fully legible, lingered for a long time merely in
his perceptions before it reached and touched his consciousness.

"CLAIRVOYANT," it read.

He started, leaned on a table as though from weakness, and continued to stare at the sign.

"Who is the cleverest fakir in that business?" he said at length to himself.

And then, after a few intent minutes:

"When he was a freight clerk—thirty years ago—that was at Farnham Mills—'H.W.'—granite shaft—sure it can be done!"

III

THE LIGHT

As Dr. Blake tucked his racket under his arm and came down to the net, the breeze caught a corner of her veil and let the sunlight

run clear across her face. He realized, in that moment, how the burning interest as a man, which he had developed in these three
weeks for Annette Markham, had quite submerged his interest as a physician. For health, this was a different creature from the one
whom he had studied in the parlor-car. Her color ran high; the greatest alarmist in the profession would have wasted no thought on
her heart valves; the look as of one "called" had passed. Though she still appeared a little grave, it was a healthy, attractive gravity;
and take it all in all she had smiled much during three weeks of daily walks and rides and tennis. Indeed, now that he remembered it,
her tennis measured the gradual change. She would never be good at tennis; she had no inner strength and no "game sense." But at
first she had played in a kind of stupor; again and again she would stand at the backline in a brown study until the passage of the ball
woke her with an apologetic start. Now, she frolicked through the game with all vigor, zest and attention, going after every shot,
smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettily put out at her bad ones.

While he helped her on with her sweater—lingering too long over that little service of courtesy—he expressed this.

"Do you know that for physical condition you're no more the same girl whom I first met than—than I am!"

She laughed a little at the comparison. "And you are no more the same man whom I first met—than I am!"

He laughed too at this tribute to his summer coating of bronze over red. "I feel pretty fit," he admitted.

"My summer always has that effect," she went on. "Do you know that for all I've been so much out of the active world"—a

shadow fell on her eyes,—"I long for country and farms? How I wish I could live always out-of-doors! The day might come—" the
shadow lifted a little—"when I'd retire to a farm for good."

"You've one of those constitutions which require air and light and sunshine," he answered.

"You're quite right. I actually bleach in the shadow—like lettuce. That's why Aunt Paula always sends me away for a month every

now and then to the quietest place proper for a well-brought-up young person."

His eyes shadowed as though they had caught that blasting shade in hers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her

own admission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was—"a spirit medium, or something," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new
philosophy," said Annette Markham.

Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held still his basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for

woman. Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of affection, proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the
new thing, greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him. He even suspected, at such times, what might be the
"something nobler than nursing."

A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tennis court. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down,

back against the bark. It was late afternoon. The other house-guests droned over bridge on the piazzas or walked in the far woods;
they were alone out-of-doors. And Annette, always, until now, so chary of confidences, developed the true patient's weakness and
began to talk symptoms.

"It is curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," she said; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still

have attacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming on and so can she. You know we've been together so much that
it's like—like two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; we can almost touch. She knows it often before I do. She
makes me go to bed early; often she puts me to sleep holding my hand, as she used to do when I was a little girl. But even sleep
doesn't much help. I come out of it with a kind of fright and heaviness. I have little memories of curious dreams and a queer sense,
too, that I mustn't remember what I've dreamed. I grow tired and heavy—I can always see it in my face. Then Aunt Paula sends me
away, and I become all right again—as I am now."

Blake did not express the impatient thought of his mind. He only said:

"A little sluggishness of the blood and a little congestion of the brain. I had such sleep once after I'd done too much work and

fought too much heat in the Cavite Hospital. Only with me it took the form of nightmare—mostly, I was in process of being boloed."

"Yes, perhaps it was that"—her eyes deepened to their most faraway blue—"and perhaps it is something else. I think it may be.

Aunt Paula thinks so, too, though she never says it."

What was the something? Did she stand again on the edge of revelation? Events had gone past the time when he could wait

patiently for her confidence, could approach it through tact. It was the moment not for snipping but for bold charging. And his blood
ran hot.

"This something—won't you tell me what it is? Why are you always so mysterious with me? Why—when I want to know

everything about you?" After he had said this, he knew that there was no going backward. Doubts, fears, terrors of conventionalities,
awe of his conservative, blood-proud mother in Paris—all flew to the winds.

Perhaps she caught something of this in his face, for she drew away a trifle and said:

"I might have told you long ago, but I wasn't sure of your sympathy."

"I want you to be sure of my sympathy in all things."

"Ah, but your mind is between!" That phrase brought a shock to Dr. Blake. At the only spiritualistic seance he had ever attended, a

greasy affair in a hall bedroom, he had heard that very phrase. A picture of this woman, so clean and windblown of mind and soul,
caught like a trapped fly in the web of the unclean and corrupt—it was that which quite whirled him off his feet.

"Between our hearts then, between our hearts!" he cried. "Oh, Annette, I love you!" His voice came out of him low and distinct,

but all the power in the world vibrated behind it. "I have loved you always. You've been with me everywhere I went, because I was
looking for you. I've seen a part of you in the best of every woman"—he pulled himself up, for neither by look nor gesture did she
respond—"I've no right to be saying this—"

"If you have not," she answered, and a delicate blush ran over her skin, "no other man has!" She said it simply, but with a curious

kind of pride.

He would have taken her hand on this, but the grave, direct gaze of her sapphirine eyes restrained him. It was not the look of a

woman who gives herself, but rather that of a woman who grieves for the ungivable.

"Ah," she said, "if anyone's to blame, it is I. I've brought it on myself! I've been weak—weak!"

"No," he said, "I brought it on—God brought it on—but what does that matter?

"It's here. I can no more fight it than I can fight the sea."

Now her head dropped forward and her hands, with that gracefully uncertain motion which was like flower-stalks swayed by a

breeze, had covered her face.

"I can't speak if I look at you," she said, "and I must before you go further—I must tell you all about myself so that you will

understand."

The confidence, long sought, was coming, he thought; and he thought also how little he cared for it now that he was pursuing a

greater thing.

"You know so little about me that I must begin far back—you don't even know about my aunt—"

"I know something—what you've said, what Mrs. Cole at the Mountain House told me. She's Mrs. Paula Markham—" his mind

went on, "the great fakir of the spook doctors," but his lips stifled the phrase and said after a pause, "the great medium."

"I don't like to hear her called that," said Annette. "In spite of what I'm going to tell you, I never saw but once the thing they call a

medium. That was years ago—but the horrible sacrilege of it has never left me. She had a part of truth, and she was desecrating it by
guesses and catch words—selling it for money! Aunt Paula is broader than I. 'It's part of the truth,' she said, 'that woman is
desecrating the work, but she's serving in her way.' I suppose so—but since then I've never liked to hear Aunt Paula called a
medium."

She paused a second on this.

"If I were only sure of your sympathy!" A note of pleading fluttered in her voice.

"No thought of yours, however I regard it, but is sure of my sympathy—because it's yours," he answered.

As though she had not heard, she went on.

"I was an orphan. I never knew my father and mother. The first things I remember are of the country—perhaps that is why I love

the out-of-doors—the sky through my window, filled with huge, puffy, ice-cream clouds, a little new-born pig that somebody put in
my bed one morning—daisy-fields like snow—and the darling peep-peep-peep of little bunches of yellow down that I was always
trying to catch and never succeeding. I couldn't say chicken. I always said shicken" She paused. With that tenderness which every
woman entertains for her own little girlhood, she smiled.

"I've told you of the five white birches. I was looking at them and naming them on my fingers the day that Aunt Paula came. My

childhood ended there. I seemed to grow up all at once."

Blake muttered something inarticulate. But at her look of inquiry, he merely said. "Go on!"

"She isn't really my aunt by blood,—Aunt Paula isn't. You understand—my father and her husband were brothers. They all died—

everybody died but just Aunt Paula and me. So she took me away with her. And after that it was always the dreadful noise and
confusion of New York, with only my one doll—black Dinah—a rag-baby. I thought," she interrupted herself wistfully, "I'd send
Dinah to you when I got back to New York. Would you like her?"

"Like her—like her! My—my—" But he swallowed his words. "Go on!" He commanded again.

"Afterwards came London and then India. Such education as I had, I got from governesses. I didn't have very much as girls go in

my—in my class. I didn't understand that then, any more than I understand why I wasn't allowed to go to school or to play with other
girls. There was a time when I rebelled frightfully at that. I can tell definitely just when it began. We were passing a convent in the
Bronx, and it was recess time. The sisters in their starched caps were sewing over by the fence, and the girls were playing—a ring
game, 'Go in and out the window'—I can hear it now. I crowded my little face against the pickets to watch, and two little girls who
weren't in the game passed close to me. The nearest one—I 'm sure I'd know her now if I saw her grown up. She was of about my
own age, very dark, with the silkiest black hair and the longest black eyelashes that I ever saw. She had a dimple at one corner of her
mouth. She wore on her arm a little bracelet with a gold heart dangling from it. I wasn't allowed any jewelry; and it came into my mind
that I'd like a gold bracelet like that, before it came that I'd like such a friend for my very ownest and dearest. The other girl, a red-
haired minx who walked with her arm about my girl's waist—how jealous I was of her! I watched until Aunt Paula dragged me away.
As I went, I shouted over my shoulder, 'Hello, little girl!' The little dark girl saw me, and shouted back, 'Hello!' Dear little thing. I
hope she's grown up safe and very happy! She'll never know what she meant to me!"

Her lips quivered again. Looking up into her face, Blake wondered for an instant at the sudden softness of her eyes. Then he

realized that they were slowly filling with tears. He reached again to seize her hands.

"Oh, no, no—wait!" she said, weakly. After a pause, she resumed:

"That got up rebellion in me. All children have such periods, I've heard. I'm docile enough now. But before I was through with this

one, Aunt Paula had to make my destiny clear to me—long before she meant to do so. And I grew to be resigned, and then glad,
because it was a greater thing."

Here a rapid, inexplicable change crossed her face. From its firmness of health and strength, it fell toward the look of one

"called"—

"I must go back again. Between Aunt Paula and me there was always a great sympathy. It's hard to describe. Often we do not

have to speak even of the most important things. When I come to know more about other people, I wondered at first why they
needed to do so much talking. Things have happened—things that I would not expect you to believe—"

She had kindled now, and she looked into his eyes like some sybil, divinely unconscious, preaching the unbelievable.

"I knew dimly, as a child knows, and accepts, that Aunt Paula had some wonderful mission and that it had to do with the other

world—all you're taught when they teach you to say your prayers. Little by little she made me understand. I grew up before I
understood fully. The Guides—Aunt Paula's—I have none as yet—had told her that I was a Light."

He caught at this word, for his lover's impatience was burning and beating within him.

"Light!" he said; "my Light!"

She regarded him gravely, and then, as though his fervor had frightened her, she looked beyond at the apple leaves.

"Don't—you'll know soon why you mustn't. Oh, help me, for I am unhappy!" She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat.

"She, the G...